In the Trump era, it is distressing but not surprising that white supremacist, neo-Nazis running for Congress are finding support in Wisconsin, Illinois and parts of deep South – but it is shocking that an avowed anti-Semite has found significant support challenging Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein for U.S. Senate in California, according to a new poll.

Patrick Little, whose candidacy for the U.S. Senate is backed by former KKK leader David Duke and other extremists, has somehow found a surprising degree of support among rural and Republican voters with little campaigning or advertising.

A poll by local ABC News affiliates and the polling company Survey USA finds Little has 18 percent support among likely voters in California, second only to Feinstein, who is polling at 39 percent of the vote.

In heavily Democratic California, the 84-year-old Feinstein, the longest-serving woman in the Senate (since 1992), has support from 63 percent of Democrats and 34 percent of independents but only 10 percent among Republicans.

Little has the support in the poll of 46 percent of Republicans, 9 percent of independents and one percent of Democrats.

The next highest candidate is state Senator Kevin DeLeon, a Democrat who until recently was the President of the state Senate with 14 percent of Democrats, 7 percent of independents and one percent of Republicans.

Under California’s system by which the top two vote-getters make the November ballot, if the primary were today it would be Feinstein vs. Little on the midterm election ballot.

Just getting on the ballot would be a huge victory from Little’s point of view.

“Even if he doesn’t win,” writes Right Wing Watch,“he hopes to bait California Republicans into engaging with his anti-Semitic and white supremacist agenda.”

Little urges his supporters to vote for him, according to a recent blog post, to let the government know that “we want to be around other whites, safe from non-whites.”

He signed one blog post with the tagline, “Your Counter-Semitic Candidate” for Senate.

In another message on Gab, Little has said he wants a database of all Jews because when Israel is destroyed “we’ll have to ensure that they aren’t hiding among us to subvert us again…There’s only one lawful punishment for high treason – the death penalty.”

He was suspended from Twitter for posts in which he tried to fire up a debate about whether there was ever a Holocaust in Nazi Germany, but since has returned to Twitter using a different handle.

According to Right Wing Watch, Little posted a campaign video on YouTube recently that said he “woke up to the Jewish question and dedicated my life to exposing these Jews that control our country.”

He charged that neo-Nazi websites, blogs, and podcasts which do not support him are secretly owned by Jews:

He said he believes with their support he could have at least 200,000 votes in a race against Feinstein, which he says would “narrow it down between me and the Zionist bitch.”

Trump’s election has given all kinds of splinter and terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacists and neo-Nazi’s license to go public with their hatred and venom, which is a sign of sickness in our society that decent people must treat just as a doctor cures a disease.

Little is not the only extremist of this ilk who has surfaced.

In March, Arthur Jones, a neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier who ran unopposed on the Republican ticket won the party’s nomination for the 3rd Congressional District in Illinois. He will face Rep. Dan Lipinski in November and possibly an independent candidate put forward by the traditional Republican party.

In Wisconsin, Paul Nehlen, who preaches white supremacist, neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic views, is running for the House seat being vacated by House Speaker Paul Ryan.

This is Nehlen’s second run for the seat after he got 16 percent of the vote two years ago, compared to 84 percent for Ryan.

Nehlen was endorsed by Breitbart News, Fox News host Laura Ingraham and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin when he ran last time, but he has been disavowed by the Wisconsin Republican party and banned from Twitter.

Now Little wants to spread his version of the poison that all minorities are bad and that only his version of religion should be legal, which goes against the U.S. Constitution and is the opposite of traditional American values.

Under any other president, these fringe candidates would be a joke.

With Trump in office, they are a real threat that requires a major reaction from decent Americans everywhere.